Brother Bear (2003)

C
Note: This review was co-written
with a guest critic.
Suzanne E. Greydanus and SDG

Bears are people too. No, actually, bears are
better than people. They only fight when they are attacked
first. They aren’t territorial; they like to share their fish.
Then after a good catch, they sit around and tell stories around
the fire. That must be why when they die, they get to be colorful
spirits in the sky that control what happens on earth just like
people do. Of course, they get to keep their own shapes up there,
while humans have to change into animals first.

Unfortunately, while all of those films were worthy efforts,
only Lilo & Stitch made any money, and other than
trading in on their classic heritage with inferior sequels like
Jungle Book 2 and Return to Never Land, the
Mouse House appears to be officially out of ideas. With
Brother Bear, a throwback to what was worst in Disney
nouveau, Disney animation’s attempts to recover from the
collapse of its renaissance have come to an end with a whimper,
not a bang, or even a growl. In fact, for the first time in who
knows when, other than next year’s Home on the Range
Disney has no new traditional hand-drawn / 2D animated features
in the works and no plans to begin any.

Brother Bear is the story of three Native American
brothers thousands of years ago — wise older brother, spirited
middle brother, and angry, irresponsible younger brother. We
learn right away that every tribe member has a totem — a spirit
guide by which they are supposed to try to live. This guide is in
the form of an animal, and it is revealed to the "wise woman" who
presents it to you when you reach adulthood.

The oldest brother is an eagle, the middle one, a wolf, and
the youngest one, Kenai, is eagerly awaiting what his totem will
turn out to be. He hopes for something manly, like a
saber-toothed tiger. His brother suggests that it should be a
wooly mammoth for his big head. When the wise woman reveals his
totem, it turns out to be… a bear. The bear, supposedly
representing the totem of love, is a disappointment to Kenai, who
hates bears and thinks "living by love" sounds like a sissy thing
to do.

When Kenai irresponsibly loses the fish catch for the day, he
childishly blames the bear who helped himself to the basket of
fish, and goes after it. The bear, showing itself to definitely
not be a sissy, almost kills him. The oldest brother, in saving
Kenai, gets killed instead and then turns into one of the
colorful spirits in the sky — in the form of an eagle, his
totem.

Kenai, in avenging his brother, then kills the bear. The
spirits decide to teach him a lesson in walking a mile in someone
else’s mocossins, or paws, in this case, by turning Kenai into a
bear. When the middle brother catches up, he sees the remnants of
his younger brother’s clothes and mistakes this bear for the one
that has now supposedly killed both of his brothers. Now this
remaining brother seeks to avenge the death of his two brothers
by killing the bear who really is his younger brother in
disguise.

What ensues now is Kenai-as-bear trying to get to the place
where the spirits meet the earth so that he can talk his brother
into changing him back, while avoiding his other brother who is
trying to track him down in order to kill him. He travels with a
bear cub, who has been separated from his mother and wants a
companion to reach the place where he thinks that he will find
her. Kenai, who does not appreciate his Disney sidekick, does the
rude, tiresome "we’re not friends" schtick (cf. Ice Age, Shrek, etc.) practically to the end of
the movie, agreeing to stick with him for purely selfish
reasons.

Even apart from the thickly-laid-on New-Age mysticism, there
are other reasons to take a pass on this schlock. The kids in the
audience at our viewing were mostly either bored or scared. At
least two families walked out in the middle. Despite the
friendly-sounding name and cuddly marketing campaign, Brother
Bear is scarier than its Lion King role model. The
moral point of Kenai-as-bear’s journey will be lost on most kids,
and not much happens to him along the way that isn’t either
tense, scary or involving his endless selfish rantings. Even the
attempted comic relief, provided by a pair of dim-witted Canadian
moose, falls flat.

Kenai, who was immature and selfish as a human, remains so as
a bear right up to the end. Except for the unconvincing
redemptive twist at the very end where he gets in touch with his
inner bear, he doesn’t seem to mature or learn anything about
living by his "totem" of love.